Disney Clones Human Faces to Make Realistic Robots
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Robots are one of the most interesting recent inventions of today. It seems, over time, our robots are becoming more and more human-like. They can walk like humans, talk like humans, and perform tasks like humans. The one thing they haven’t really been able to successfully do, though, is look like humans. They are metal and mechanical. Achieving the human look is difficult. There are so many complexities in the human form.
If you think about it, robots probably shouldn’t look like humans. A human-like robot will certainly freak everyone out. If robots looked like us, we would constantly feel like a robopocalypse is on our horizon.
But it would be fun if we kept these human-like robots to a minimum and used them for specific things. That’s exactly what Disney is planning on doing.
Disney Research in Zurich, Switzerland, just developed a new process of robot-making that enables a physical human face to be cloned onto a robot. The process is called “Physical Face Cloning,” and it involves the scanning of a human head. Once the human head is scanned, the coordinates and expressions are recorded onto a 3D program. It uses measurements of skin elasticity and skin thickness to create a realistic mold of the face with silicon.
The robot face looks eerily accurate. Even the wrinkles and fine lines are portrayed on the robot. The robot is also capable of accurately portraying emotions like sadness, happiness, and anger.
Disney is planning on using the robots in its theme parks. They want the robots to add “realism to the interactive characters.”
These robots will certainly add a more realistic element to the theme parks. It would make for a fun interactive game, where people could ask the robots questions and see the robot reply with human-like emotions and expressions.
There’s no word yet on when the robots will be released, but this video demonstrates the complicated process involved in making them:
